This document is a result of work funded through the Irish Human Rights Executive Committee (IHREC) 2020 grant scheme, in which Community Response, in collaboration with the South Inner City Local Drug & Alcohol Task Force, were successful with an application to fund work on the following “To build and empower new communities to understand their rights when accessing the addiction and Homeless services and to protect and promote equality and intercultural understanding in those organisations.” The purpose of the project and this document is to provide guidance to services on their obligations in relation to accessibility and inclusion, as enshrined in the Public Sector Duty and elsewhere. The aim was to provide an accessible resource for services to guide their efforts in relation to their inclusion efforts, particularly for service users from cultural minority communities, or for whom English is a second language. 

The document contains a summary of the Public Sector Duty as relevant to inclusion and accessibility for this population, a cross-referenced summary of inclusion and accessibility standards relevant to drug/alcohol and homeless services, and a summary of literature detailing additional good practice where it is not enshrined in existing national standards. The ultimate purpose of this guide will be to support services to identify not only the minimum standards they should seek to implement, but to inspire and encourage services to excel in their inclusion efforts, ensuring a sector that is already modelling good practice in supporting the most marginalised groups in Ireland, to close any gaps in the nets of their service provision.